Five prophecies

from the author.

Dear friends, today I would like to share with you a unique text - a translation of our book, a full-fledged novel that has not seen the light for a long time and only recently published on the Russian-language book market. Our good friend the translator has not finished the translation yet, so I, Eirik, made a strong-willed decision to make a gift to you, my English-speaking friends - to put most of the book in open access. It is not known when the translation will be completed, and I did not want to torment you anymore, so here, today and twice a week (on Wednesdays and Sundays) I will delight you with an excerpt from our main cycle of novels.

Prologue The sunset dusk filled the small writing room, and the feeble light of a single candle was no match for it. The master of this realm of ink, quills, notebooks and scrolls threw the window wide open, letting the cool summer breeze in – along with the sweet smell of a dozen of herbs, which felt especially strong now, in the last few hours of the burning-out reddish glow. He breathed in – the air smelled of honey and of river waters. Having concluded that one candle just wasn’t enough, he lit some more. A sleepy moth flew into the window to flutter around like a clueless shadow; shooed away from the deadly flame, it flew back outside. Now, at last, was the time to settle down for the calm and thorough labor that had been put aside for too long. The book is ready, the inkwell and the quill are waiting. How much longer? “I must write it down. I simply have no right to leave it as it is, just in my head”. He took a deep breath, smoothed out his thick black hair ruffled by the wind, and finally took the quill and dipped it into the inkwell. He wrote quickly, yet not hastily – his hand moved with the speed and ease of a scholar having written a lot of parchments in his life. And speaking of the words – oh, he had long been pondering on each and every one, and now they were flowing speedily and smoothly. Ink flourishes and elaborate lines ran into the page in a small and tidy hand, turning into words, and the words were turning into a story… no. Into a life. Sometimes… “…It is hard to understand all the subtleties of the game that the Gods and the spirits, the ones whom we call the Ayulan, the Masters of the Elements, play. And even moreso – to interpret those correctly, and almost impossible to retell those interpretations to common folk. So it happened that our world became a place for many mysterious, great and dreadful events to unfold, ones of utmost importance to more than just us, although we are the ones living in this world since the days of our birth. What is the Sea? What is the Earth and what is the Air above us? What is Fire – and is the fire of a hearth equal to the celestial fire we call the Sun, if ayulan Aitir is the one ruling them both? There is an answer to this, indeed, but few know it. Albeit to know what the will of the sea is, one must not necessarily spend years over scholarly tracts learning the essence of things. One could just wish recklessly one day for knowing more than you are destined to. And this is how my tale shall unfold…”